Corporate financial crimes in Pakistan – a review and analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight those factors which involve elite class criminals in corporate financial crimes. This research implies the fact that the study of criminal behavior is pivotal for finding out the reasons behind such crimes. Design/methodology/approach By describing theories of criminology, researchers assess the nature of financial criminals in Pakistan from a theoretical perspective. Findings Elite-class people commit crimes upon perceiving high benefits and less punishment. Moreover, the social environment contributes greatly to inducing criminal behavior. Research limitations/implications Explanation of criminal behaviors provided in the study will be helpful in providing directions for the prevention of such criminal actions in the future. Originality/value This research examines the criminal behavior of elite class crimes from the theoretical perspective which will be significant in the prevention of such behaviors.

Giving Mirrors to Female Prisoners in Alice Birch’s [BLANK]

The paper at hand attempts to interpret a contemporary British playwright’s theatrical artistic attempt to present a disturbing social issue and to suggest possible modes of help. In [BLANK], Alice Birch confronts the audience with the ugly cycle of women’s criminal conducts, female criminals’ offending and reoffending. The playwright employs the theater of the absurd as a theatrical medium through which she portrays the absurd reality of these female criminals and their families. To confront and shock the audience with the ugliness of these charterers’ reality, Birch uses In-Yer-Face theater. Birch suggests that the female criminal characters are victims who need proper psychological and medical rehabilitation services to break the ugly cycle of reoffending. The playwright implies a very challenging question for the audience: is it possible to break some patterns of some biological genetic behaviors? That is, can female criminals, in [BLANK], break away from their criminal behaviors that are biologically innate through the help of medicine and psychology not just through some practices of traditional stigmatizing forms of discipline and punishment in the justice system that are often proven to be unreliable means of constraint? By shocking and confronting society with the ugly reality of many female prisoners, in [BLANK], Birch is trying to give these pathetic female characters’ voices, mirrors, selves, forcing society to acknowledge them as human beings who have an essential role in society.

Early Intervention and Crime Prevention Perspectives from the Frontline

In this critical review and social innovative narrative, the author details their perspective on early intervention and prevention in relation to terrorism, radicalization, and extremism. Drawing on over 10 years of frontline experience as a teacher, police officer, and registered social worker, the author discusses the interdisciplinary approach that is crucial in preventing and resolving criminal behaviors especially as it relates to terrorism, radicalization, and extremism. While the paper focuses on this global act of violence, the discussion does not only apply to terrorism and radicalization. There are a multitude of psycho-social factors that may cause one to become vulnerable, making them susceptible to being recruited and/or engaging in criminal activity especially for women who have historically and currently been disadvantaged. The following will discuss why the current approach in crime prevention and detection follows a more reactive model. Ultimately it will consider whether the current approach, that is largely driven by law enforcement and security who are at the forefront in resolving these issues, is the most effective approach in crime resolution.

The effects of absent fathers on adolescent criminal activity: an economic approach

Simple ordinary least squares estimates indicate that absent fathers boost probabilities of adolescent criminal behavior by 16–38%, but those numbers likely are biased by unobserved heterogeneity. This paper first presents an economic model explaining that unobserved heterogeneity. Then turning to empirics, fixed effects, which attempt to address that bias, suggest that absent fathers reduce certain types of adolescent crime, while lagged-dependent variable models suggest the opposite. Those conflicting conclusions are resolved by an approach that combines those two estimators using an orthogonal reparameterization approach, with model parameters calculated using a Bayesian algorithm. The main finding is that absent fathers do not appear to directly affect adolescent criminal activity. Rather, families with absent fathers possess traits that appear to correlate with increased adolescent criminal behaviors.

Digital Currency Illegal Behavior Detection Based on Mutual Information Prior Loss

In recent years, with the rapid development of digital currency, digital currency brings us convenience and wealth, but also breeds some illegal and criminal behaviors. Different from traditional currencies, digital currency provides concealment to criminals while also exposing their behavior. The analysis of their behavior can be used to detect whether the current digital currency transaction is legal. There is a problem that most digital currency transactions are in compliance with laws and regulations, and only a small part of them uses digital currency to conduct illegal activities. It belongs to the problem of sample imbalance. It is quite challenging to accurately distinguish which transactions are legal and which are illegal in the massive digital currency transactions. For this reason, this study combines the mutual information and the traditional cross-entropy loss function and obtains the loss function based on the mutual information prior. The loss function based on the mutual information prior is that the bias of the category prior distribution is added after the output of the model (before the softmax), which makes the model consider category prior information to a certain extent when predicting. The experimental results show that the use of the loss function based on mutual information prior to the detection of digital currency illegal behavior has a good effect in SVM, DNN, GCN, and GAT methods.

Multi-Level Marketing Scams

Multi-level marketing (MLM) scams encompass various criminal behaviors. MLM companies regularly pay commissions to individuals for directly selling services or products to customers. Individuals are also regularly paid commissions to recruit others to sell MLM companies’ products and services. Such a business structure provides the opportunity for fraudulent behaviors and activities to take place. These fraudulent activities often include misleading claims regarding expected financial compensation, false health claims of products or services, and purchase incentivization beyond what any one customer could reasonably consume, among others. MLM companies, specifically top management, routinely engage in white-collar offenses. Edwin Sutherland, a preeminent sociologist, first defined white-collar offenses in 1939 as crimes committed by individuals with high social status and prestige during the course of their occupations. These crimes are commonly difficult to recognize due to their hidden nature. MLM scams, similar to other white-collar crimes, have three general costs: financial, physical, and social. For example, one MLM scheme case involved a company’s nutrition-club system that recruited people to buy and then try and sell its flavored nutritional shakes. This company was accused of targeting poor, often uneducated individuals, and undocumented immigrants. Financially, more than half of the individuals recruited lost or made no money from their investments. A lawsuit against this MLM company forced them to restructure their business model and focus on selling products instead of recruiting more distributors (participants). MLM scams also have a physical cost associated with them. Such crimes can be violent, since people are maimed and killed by unsafe products and services. There have been some unfortunate instances where individuals facing financial ruin from such scams attempt or commit suicide. While the social cost of MLM frauds cannot be directly measured, social exclusion from family and friends is a common byproduct of MLM due to the high-pressure nature of selling products and services and recruiting more individuals to buy and sell them. Personal relationships regularly suffer, and victims of these scams are often left feeling lonely, depressed, and isolated. Family members may trust the victim for involving them in the scam. It also creates a loss of trust in all MLM, because fraudulent practices undermine the legitimacy of this business model. With growing economic inequality in the United States and around the world, many individuals may turn to MLM in need of a viable form of income. The financial, physical, and social costs of MLM scams are likely substantial in all advanced industrialized nations.

Sexual Violence in the Digital Age: A Criminal Law Conundrum?

The emergence of new interactions, notably those online, has led to the parallel development of criminal behaviors—not all of which are captured by the current legal framework. This article addresses the challenge posed to criminal law by the emergence of technologically facilitated violence, specifically its sexualized online forms. In particular, it argues for cautious yet specific criminalization of violent behaviors online whilst considering the broader criminal liabilities of all actors involved in the facilitation and perpetration of digital sexual violence. This article draws upon national—contentious—examples of attempts to regulate disruptive sexual violence perpetrated through digital means, with particular attention given to provisions in the UK, Germany, and France.

Accountability Courts and Diversion Programs

This chapter focuses on prosecutors’ roles in accountability courts and diversion programs, details their participation in creating these specialized courts and programs, explains their gate-keeping responsibilities, and discusses ethical rules raised by their participation. Specifically, the chapter describes drug courts and veterans courts, which are two of the most prominent specialized courts. Using these two specialized courts as representatives of other similarly situated courts, the chapter explains the history behind the creation of these courts, their structures, operations, and their specific goals of addressing the underlying causes of criminal defendants’ criminal behaviors. In the United States specialized court settings, the prosecutor, rather than being adversarial, tends to be collaborative with other court practitioners. In non-U.S. specialized courts, the prosecutors’ roles are not that significantly different from those of their U.S. counterparts. With ongoing efforts on reforming the U.S. criminal justice system, especially as it concerns issues addressed by specialty courts, U.S. prosecutors are likely to continue their support of these courts.